Here’s a standalone sequel to the fan-favorite Altaltcomics comic1 from 2023, made for a benefit zine for a comics library in NY. Some awful child scribbled all over it with a biro, sorry about that.

Did you spot all the references? Well done! Continuing with Foghorn in a bit, but first, a few bits and bobs from my sketchbook.

Btw, my older animated film got a second breath of life and death here. And I’m hoping to finally finish the next one, which I started and abandoned ages ago.

FOGHORN CONT.

Regular listeners of my podcast will remember the umbrella story from this episode (one of the better ones in the recent crop). 2

Two Librans

15. Bonkers in Phoenix

Just in time for spooky szn, one of the more disturbing Fall songs from an album with a kind of holiday skull. More importantly, we finally fulfill the astrological premise of our podcast, and talk for an unreasonable amount of time about a certain Bushwick bar, centered around the stars and their signs…

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7 months ago · 6 likes · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

Well, it’s being recycled into fiction below. A lot of the elements in this story are directly autobiographical, though much more is completely made up, and at this point they are so merged and intertwined that I’m not always sure what really happened and what didn’t.

Previous installments are here.

(continued behind the paywall)

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Apparently I lost a ton of followers after last month’s post about Resident Evil and game design.

It’s as if Substack was telling me: stay in your lane!

Well, fine, this time it’s all drawings and comics.

My latest book sold out in just a month, though you can still find it in bookstores like Gosh Comics (they also have the last two issues of Terrible Father), and online retailers. It could have something to do with a relatively small print run, but let’s not focus on that, shall we?

Very grateful for the nice reception, and all the reviews and warm words, thanks very much to everyone who got a copy. Hopefully, there will be a reprint, maybe around the time my next book comes out (if all goes well, maybe even next year).

Creative Class Declassified

Speaking of, it’s been a while since the last installment of Foghorn, so here we go with chunky 11-page installment:

(continued behind the paywall)

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The latest Resident Evil is equally brilliant and infuriating, and all the brilliance is extremely frontloaded, which makes for an excellent first impression, and a fairly exhausting final one. It brings about one of the best innovations in the series history, then borrows desperately from RE4 and other, overall more successful installments.

(earlier Resident Evil coverage)

That pattern is common to almost all RE games, and the problem of sustaining tension and interest has always bothered me—why do they all stumble towards the end (with some notable exceptions)? I’ll try to outline these and other issues, and how I think they can be solved, similarly to the way I covered Elden Ring a while ago.

(earlier Elden Ring coverage)

PROBLEM 1: INVENTORY

First of all, there is the obvious issue of growing inventory and upgrades, which doesn’t always fit with the premise of survival horror. These games should feel almost impossible, and the almost is the most important part. It can be easily manipulated, with adaptive difficulty and item placement, but these seem like rather cheap solutions, especially because they can be easily manipulated back.

The most egregious example of this mechanic is in Alan Wake 2, where items in various boxes are generated in response to what you have in your inventory. Even if you don’t exploit this mechanic, it’s not great because the player isn’t trusted to overcome the problems, and is instead carefully nudged towards the right path. Plenty of modern AAA games have this misguided aspiration to act like an HBO show, and some of them even become that, which to me feels like the ultimate insult to the medium.

My solution would be to remove these magical storage containers altogether. Of course, this requires some adjustment to the inventory system, or the game becomes excruciating, since puzzle items take up space in the inventory, just like weapons. Personally, I’d either have a separate inventory for key items, or just let them exist outside of inventory restrictions. In my experience, if I spend some time wandering around and realize I don’t have some lockpick to some cabinet, the thought is rarely ‘ah, you got me, game! I should’ve planned better,’ but ‘damn it, now I have to do it all over again.’

Either way, it creates a very simple system of limiting how many resources you can carry. So, if you are very good at the game, and you use only 1/3rd of the resources scattered around a level, you still can’t take the other 2/3rd into the next area, making you overpowered, and so you have to make decisions as to what must be left behind, all in all adding to the survival elemt. It’s a simple solution, but it’s better than what we have, where, unless you play on the highest difficulties (and even then, sometimes) you end up with a huge amount of unused stuff if you do a half-decent job of exploring.

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INTERMISSION

I have my last film (from two years ago, sigh) screening in Wales, and I put together a little remix from the assets, which made me want to go back to Blender immediately.

Also, if you are getting sick of video game talk, my last comics post (it’s good):

DADA issues

Dry Soup Day

I hope you’re excited for more adventures of everyone’s favorite male parent—we’re starting with a little sequel to the now-classic Terrible Father comic…

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3 months ago · 18 likes · Roman Muradov

And lastly, I made an album cover, based on one of my 2020 loops. Somehow, it’s my very first record cover!

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PROBLEM 2: MAP/TIME/SPACE

The biggest challenge to horror in these games, in my opinion, is the inventory/map that pauses the game. They removed the inventory pause in RE7, and immediately brought it back in the next installment, which I think was a huge mistake.

This is very much one of the things that made Bloodborne and Dark Souls often feel like survival horror games—you couldn’t just pause and think about the best item or weapon to use, and most importantly, you couldn’t take a break from running around zombies in a spooky mansion to check the map, where you’d see not only all the doors and passages, but even the unpicked items and points of interest.

Starting any new RE game it always strikes me how fun it still is to be tossed into a big strange house, and try to figure out a way around it, with all the very video-gamey doors and puzzles. The map detracts from this experience a great deal, especially in tense moments, when you’re supposed to be making snap decisions. Sure, you can force yourself to be immersed and just not use it as often, but again, when there’s a temptation to locate the quickest route on the map, it’s hard to ignore it.

A simple solution is making the map an in-game object. You can pull it out when zombies are around, but you probably wouldn’t want to. On easier difficulties, you can have the character point out your location with a finger, or have it displayed if the map is some sort of iPad. On harder difficulties, it would be just an image to consult.

As added tension, you’d need a light source to see it, which would make the horrifying basement in RE7 even more horrifying. Compare it to the basement in RE9—mechanically, it’s far more complex and well-realized, and even the classic ‘collect three fuses’ puzzle is nicely paced and presented with a few minor twists. Now, imagine how much scarier it would be if instead of pulling out the map at any moment, you were pressed to plan out a route in the safe room, and try to keep it in your memory as you navigate the place. Hollow Knight introduced the brilliant mechanic of finding a portion of the map, and only expanding it when you rest at your save point. Not only does it make the exploration of the world feel far more immersive, it adds another incentive to survive.

REQUIEM REVISITED

Now, let’s go through the actual game, and from this point on, there will be light spoilers. RE9 starts pretty well with a simple walking simulator sequence that has enough atmosphere to carry you through, though it probably wouldn’t hurt for it to feel a bit more engaged. Then we have a very brief little bout of Leon rushing through the street, which once again, teases us with what RE could’ve been. The opening area of RE3 is one another tease—for a minute, the town feels alive, and the horror urgent, and of course it ends too soon, and tosses you into the usual sequence of sewers and basements. I’ve only played the remake, which dumbed things down as much as possible, but apparently the original had branching paths and semi-randomized items and encounters, back in 1999. Not only did these ideas not develop along with the visual fidelity, most of them got abandoned altogether, along with the static cameras that did that classic thing of turning a hardware limitation into an artistic trick.

RE1 remake still looks incredible with its pre-rendered backgrounds, and while the current tech is more-or-less capable of rendering this kind of fidelity in real time, it’s clear that constraints gave original RE so much of its identity, from slowly opening doors in first person (floating in the void, which makes them doubly off-putting), to camera tricks, like the brilliant mirror room in RE1 that has to be experienced. With all these constraints gone, creativity has plummeted as well, and games (and all media, frankly) became increasingly samey and safe. Thing is, we can still have semi-fixed cameras when it makes sense. In the more action-ey sequences these fixed angles added little to the horror, and just made the game annoying, but now we could potentially let the camera follow the character with slight adjustments in placement, allowing it to linger here and there, and cut between shots for a dramatic effect.

For one, the camera can be lower than it often is. Placing it above the character, or at shoulder level gives the viewer a sense of detachment, and a bit of a vantage point. Then there’s the issue of peeking behind walls, which the character shouldn’t be able to do. That can also be fixed by simply limiting how far you can rotate the camera in a corridor. I even think that tank controls can be given a second chance, with modern gamepads, but I doubt anyone outside retro indie studios would be willing to test the player’s patience this way.

Killer 7 used the semi-fixed perspective to great effect by simply limiting the movements to forwards and backwards, with occasional choice of direction at various forks in the road. This was odd and old-fashioned for its time, but now it feels like a brilliantly bold and appropriate decision. Since then, Suda 51, the game’s director, went on to make a series of over-the-shoulder games, and all of them feel lost without that fixed camera. It can also be a great resource-saving measure. If you have a chase sequence, why bother spending hours on modeling an environment that you’ll simply run through. Instead, you can just not show half of it, and focus on perfecting that other half, and direct extra time and attention to areas that you explore freely at your own pace.

But back to Requiem. Grace wakes up briefly upside down, and them we are introduced to the terrifying first stalker, referred to as ‘the Girl.’ Mechanically, it’s all pretty simple, but the sequence is short and nicely staged, and acts as a solid tutorial. This is where I can’t help but imagine the same small area developed a bit more, with just a few more patterns of behavior, and ways of dealing with them.

As we get away from the Girl, Leon comes to the hospital, armed with wisecracks, and a pistol. We get introduced to the chainsaw zombie, and here I must be a bore and ask: why is there a chainsaw in a hospital? And why is a doctor zombie wielding it? I know, the answer is because it’s sick, and it’s a video game, but still, I would’ve preferred it to be some kind of surgical drill or a surgeon’s saw. The whole chainsaw mechanic is pretty disappointing mechanically—it sounds good in theory, but in practice it’s a lot of busywork, keeping the zombies away from the chainsaw while it’s spinning on the ground, so that Leon can eventually grab it and do a few flamboyant slow swings, before lodging it in some zombie to return the thing to the zombies, who have no trouble picking it off the floor even while it’s actively spinning (makes sense gameplay-wise, but still, come on, let them get at least somewhat hurt in the process, otherwise it seems like the very clumsy zombies are somehow preternaturally adept at handing spinning chainsaws). Once again, the sequence is over far too soon, but don’t worry, we’ll get to spend more time with Leon… so much more that you’ll miss these short introductory areas, trust me.

But now, the main part of the game begins, with Grace exploring the big spooky mansion. Undeniably, this is the peak RE experience—the environment is rich with atmosphere, the tension is slowly building, and the attention to detail is incredible. And then the zombies—they now have personalities! Some of them are obsessed with light switches, others are stuck in their occupational loops, chopping up meat or cleaning the bathroom (with blood instead of Windolene).

This is the best innovation RE has seen in a while, and I wish they focused on these semi-unique zombies and expanded their behaviors into systems that could interact with each other. There is a glimpse of that (you can set the noise-sensitive IV-drip zombies to attack the others), but it could’ve been so much more. Imagine some of them having a name that’s alluded to here and there, dropping personal items, keys to their rooms, little backstories. That is a lot of work, but so much effort has been put into the far less interesting stuff that is to come, while the most innovative parts are left half-baked.

The puzzles in this section are… fine. Well, no, they are incredibly simplistic, but that’s what we must expect from modern games. There’s still something satisfying in the process, partly thanks to Capcom’s charmingly clunky UI animations. Still, why couldn’t these puzzles evolve along with combat and other aspects of the game? Instead, they are pretty much stuck in time, and often, the doors and locks of the very first iterations of RE are more demanding (admittedly, often more annoying as well).

The game has an absurdly convoluted secret puzzle, clearly intended to create internet lore in the manner of Kojima’s PT, and sure, let’s have it, but then this is the range of puzzle complexity: either press three buttons to open door, or do this ridiculous sequence of events to get some hidden message from the developers.

Perhaps the dumbest puzzle comes towards the end, when our protagonist has to smuggle a blind girl through corridors full of zombies, so she can input a 4-symbol code. The code is marked on similar machines with symbols of sun, moon, and star, each one with a braille underneath it. The machine, however, has the images on the buttons worn off (but not the braille, somehow), so that’s why we need to drag the girl here. Of course, since we have solved TWO of these puzzles before, Grace could just write down or memorize what the codes for the symbols look like, or even brute-force it, which would probably take around 10 minutes… The intended solution is so stupid that I kind of love it, as it plays right into the B-movie origins of the RE series. Was it intentionally dumb? Who knows—it goes beyond plain stupid into absurdly stupid, and thus becomes good again.

Anyway, I won’t spoil any more of this area, because it’s great, and it makes the game worth playing, frankly. Afterwards, we have another small Leon sequence, and then the above-mentioned basement with the three fuses opening a door. At this point, the fun is more-or-less over. The following few sequences are fine, but after the care center with its personality zombies and beautiful environments, it all feels like a glorified cutscene.

And then we get to Raccoon City, and things get really bleh. Not bad, but so, so dull. The ruins of the city could’ve provided some great material, but instead we have a giant, empty-ish area with three bits of a bomb to find in order to blow up a gate, which Leon could’ve easily gotten around otherwise (this is a bombed-out city after all, but sure, it is a video game and so, three bits must be found).

Here, zombies too have personalities, but these personalities are limited to ‘throwing a stick’ (which they endlessly dig out of any terrain), or ‘shooting a gun.’ These fortified Call of Duty zombies mark a real low point in the game, and the whole series. Even with this dumb premise, they could’ve played on the zombie behavior, but for the most part it’s run and gun, and Leon is given an absurd amount of resources (at least on standard difficulty), as well as an unbreakable axe that counters almost anything.

By the way, why did it have to be an axe? The classic RE knife could’ve functioned in the exact same manner. I guess, once again, because it’s sick, and it’s a video game. Anyway, this area is so boring, I don’t even want to remember it, but I think it could’ve easily been cut out, and indeed my conspiracy theory is that it is a chunk from an abandoned open-world RE game. Regardless, our treat for spending hours on blowing up a fence is a bombastic but mechanically bereft chase sequence, which at least is a nice change of pace after all the gunny zombies and beige corridors.

Then we get to visit Raccoon City Police Department, the site of RE2, and it’s a decent nostalgia trip that doesn’t overstay itself. That is however, where the game completely gives up on new ideas, and just feeds you more of that nostalgia for the remaining few hours. We have a dull chase sequence and a dull fight with Mr. X from RE2, or his clone, or something, then probably the worst boss fight in the game—a rematch with the mutant flower from RE1, or its clone, or something.

This one is even worse than Mr. X, mechanically, since all you need to do is shoot it in the face and dodge left and right. That’s it. How is it the best they could come up with in 2026? And yes, the game also pops up a message ‘defeat the giant plant,’ as if there was any other option. Also, the auto-saves completely ruin any element of surprise or ambush (in RE3 remake it’s particularly notable), and Leon has access to an infinite-save laptop, while Grace has to use traditional typewriters (although she is of a generation that probably would have no idea how to operate one). And don’t get me started on Leon’s e-store that replaced the merchant from RE4 (I guess they thought they can’t just re-introduce basically the same character yet again after the chubbier version of him in RE8).

What follows is not much better. Another glorified cutscene in the orphanage which serves no discernible purpose, and makes me feel bad for the environment designers, who did such an outstanding job, only to have us wheeze past all this stuff on wobbly child legs, while solving the most mind-numbingly bland put-thing-into-hole puzzles the game has to offer.

Finally, we get to the inevitable big spooky lab, and again, the art direction here saves the day. Gameplay-wise, it’s nothing new, except now we have to deal with Lickers from RE2 who are exactly as you remember them. There’s a brief section where you can get them to attack some dudes with guns, and that just happens once, and isn’t particularly exciting.

Finally, we get to the choice. Grace must input a code, which has been mentioned explicitly moments before, so I was desperately hoping they might at least let us type it in. Fat chance. It’s a yes or no question between a good ending and a bad ending. Great stuff. The bad ending at least spares us the final boss fight, which is just as dull and predictable as all the others. With that, the game is over, but guess what: the evil is still residing! Oh, and there was a Wesker-at-home style antagonist who is so forgettable I’ve genuinely already forgotten about him until just now.

I don’t know, maybe next time they will nail it! Maybe RE9 was a bit of a mutant from various semi-discarded bits, and maybe RE10 will be the real conclusion we’ve all been waiting for. I doubt it, the dumbing down has been going for some time and people seem pretty happy to simp for a hot dad Leon, regardless of what he does in the game. The only thing that can save Capcom is obviously this post (hire me, already).

But no, I am cautiously excited for their next game, Pragmata, which feels like a smart mix of old-school mechanics and innovative design choices, and most of all I am appreciative of Capcom’s commitment to pure video-gamey fun. That’s why the RE series endures, and all its many flaws are repeatedly forgiven. Resident Evil is camp in a dumb, straightforward way, without self-aware shrugs and tortured allusions to big themes that could elevate it into the realm of proper art.

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Thanks for reading, and I’m now going back to a monthly schedule—too many things in life and work, and I’m not sure why I thought doing it twice a month might be a good idea. I thought it would help with the ol’ engagement, but honestly, I don’t care to put up with Substack’s ecosystem at this point, and I’ll just treat it as a newsletter, which is why I signed up for it in the first place.

REAL FLOWERS

There will be more TF in a minute, but first.. my book has been out for a month, and I can finally stop promoting it. You can all about the thing here:

If you live in Brooklyn, you may’ve caught me and my podcast manfriend at the Desert Island, for which I made this gorgeous flyer:

Regardless, here’s a new episode of Two Librans, which is very digressive and very manly:

Two Librans

21. Y.F.O.C.

In this episode we intended to cover the entirety of the Fall’s late-career banger “Y.F.O.C / Slippy Floor”. However, we went so off-course we can legally only say we covered the acronym. We’ll cover the eponymous “Slippy Floor” that somehow broke both…

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3 months ago · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

Anyway, time for more Father. This adventure was inspired by a letter that he received and this is a reminder that you can send Terrible Father an email, or just leave a comment below.

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Foghorn ch.3 resumes in the next post. More Father forthcoming, too. Stay tuned, spread the word, etc &c.

I had a lovely launch party at Gosh Comics in that there London, and if you missed it, you can get a copy with a sketchcard, directly at the shop, or online here.

If you life in NY, you can catch me for the second and last event at Desert Island on March 12th.

There’s been some nice reviews (so far) that seem to get what I was going for with this book, so I thought here I’ll share some thoughts on making it, but first, a few discarded pages and panels to share something that isn’t in the book:

Some of these got redrawn, others just got deleted or replaced. The one below was significantly simplified in the book, because I thought it was giving too much attention to the underworld, as cool as it looks.

A lot of them are pretty good, I’m actually not quite sure why I killed this one, but oh well. It probably felt too overpowering. I was constantly going back and forth, tweaking the flow and the level of visual information, wanting the images to ‘read’ with a certain pace.

Another glimpse of the underworld that just felt too unrelated, and quite a bit too gory. As with many of my stories, what’s in the book is only a small glimpse into the world that it inhabits.

There’s a lot more in the pages that did make it, here’s what the demons used to look like in the sketch and here’s what they look like in the book.

Also it was originally called just ‘the Living,’ but I wanted the reference to be more overt, plus ‘All the Living’ has a nice double meaning, as pretty much all of my books do.

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It’s a very quiet, slow book, full of small interconnected details that tell their own story. Unlike my convoluted and incomprehensible earlier books, all that stuff is pretty subtle here, and you can easily blaze through the narrative without getting confused (although I would advise against it).

After the first ‘final’ version of the book was, I removed tons of pages and added some 40-50 more, layering and trimming the thing to maintain the lightness of a half-remembered dream, both in the story, and in the style.

It channeled a lot of my early obsessions, from manga to abstract art, and the narrative is a kind of very roundabout accounting of personal grief told through an inversion of two well-known short stories (one is referenced in the title, the other in the first few pages).

It’s a rather sad book, but drawing it did help me find beauty and warmth within our dumb lonely modern lives (most of the book was drawn during the pandemic), and I hope it can bring some of that to the reader.

I was so burned out on all that melancholy afterwards, that I started making things like Terrible Father, and the much more grounded book I’m currently working on, but having revisited All the Living, I can see that all these comics inhabit that same melancholy, and this melancholy will probably never leave me, and that’s fine—it’s nice to have some peace in that acceptance, after years of shifting identities and styles in a futile attempt to escape myself.

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PS. My various rants on gen-Ai got featured in this report as a case study. Hopefully it will lead to some regulations, though I’m not optimistic.

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Yes, I’m still doing bootleg-Nancy-within-the-realm-of-despair. I don’t know why it’s so amusing, but I can’t seem to stop. Foghorn continues, but first, a bit of promo for my new very upcoming book:

It’s coming out February 24th from Fantagraphics, and if you live in London, get it signed by me at Gosh Comics on the 26th. If you live in New York, I’m planning to do a signing at Desert Island on March 12th—stay tuned for a proper announcement.

There’s a couple of nice reviews that seem to ‘get it’. A lot of the narrative is in the details, and it’s comforting to know that this came across.

And here’s a trailer, with a lovely soundtrack by Dory Bavarsky, who wrote the music for most of my animated films.

If you can’t make it to the Gosh event, I drew some sketch cards that will be included with the first 20 or so copies.

Lastly, don’t miss the latest episode of Two Librans, which is an unusual one—we go down a rabbit hole around the life and work of a very peripheral and not a very good artist.

Two Librans

20. Poisoned Fishes

Today we are covering several terrible songs by probably the worst ex-member (although the membership itself is disputed) of the Fall, E* Bl*n*y. We censored his name because he seems like the sort of person who googles himself, and I don’t think there’s a single kind word said about him in this whole episode. So, E*, if you stumbled upon this, just wal…

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4 months ago · 4 likes · 3 comments · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

In the next issue, more of fan-favorite Terrible Father, and I hope you didn’t miss his latest and so-far longest adventure:

And now, resuming Foghorn behind the paywall. The first ten pages of the 3rd chapter were posted here:

All of it is under the Foghorn tag.

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And, before we begin, my latest book is coming out this month (Feb 24th) and if you’re in London, come to the release party at Gosh to get it signed.

By the way, this and other longer posts are often cropped if you receive it your email, so don’t miss the button to keep reading it on Substack.

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More Terrible Father comics in this tag.

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Foghorn continues into the second half of what will hopefully be a book in about a year, but I’ll keep it for paypigs, since I imagine most casual readers aren’t invested in following a 200+ page story.

First, a couple of recent illustrations from last year, one for an early Chekhov story, published for Christmas in the New Statesman.

And a few improvised sharpie drawings for Agapius:

Also, you can preorder my upcoming book, or ask your local store to carry it—the thing is published under Fantagraphics Underground, so it will have a smaller distribution and promotion. Here’s a trailer I put together:

If you live in London, stay tuned because I’m doing a release party, most likely on February 26th at Gosh Comics.

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Meanwhile, catch up with my travels on the latest episode of Two Librans, which has NO Fall content, just a silly travelogue.

Two Librans

18. Papal Visit Pt. 1

WARNING, INFANT…

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5 months ago · 2 likes · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

We discuss, among other things (sensitive actor Pedro Pascal, Leigh Bowery, Beastmode, Barbican, L.S.Lowry in 3d) this egg:

And now, the third chapter of Foghorn begins with the first 8 pages, for paid subscribers only.

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Let’s start the new year with the same old terrible father, and a return to an earlier format of this newsletter:

• on the first first day of each month everyone gets a free issue

• on the 15th, there will be a second, paywalled issue for true believers

The letters will be a bit shorter, and more contained for the 6-7-nanoseconds-of-attention-span generation. Can you manage it? Let’s start with a short story:

If you’re confused about the prawn, catch up on Terrible Father installments here. Everything else should not confuse you.

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Don’t forget to preorder the English edition of my last book, which is newly edited and polished up and printed on nicer paper:

And for a slap of post-festive gloom, here’s the newest episode of Two Librans, in which we discuss all the topical matters of the day, and a very odd Christmas tune. It’s a bit meh in my opinion, but we have some good stuff in the can, and if you’re new to this, check out the episodes Spoilt Victorian Child and Bonkers in Phoenix.

Two Librans

17. Jingle Bell Rock

This episode we cover such festive topics as school shootings, Zohran’s waifu (who is definitely listening to the pod), and the prison industrial complex! Since this is the first episode we recorded and edited in a timely manner, we even talked about the newest Jeffrey Epstein “drop” and other topical matters—listen now, or feel irrelevant forever…

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6 months ago · 3 likes · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

I’m back from my self-imposed French exile, which ended with a little miracle. In the last couple weeks I was sharing the residency with one Nathan Cowdry, and we even jammed out a short comic together:

If you find any of this offensive, it’s 100% Cowdry’s contribution. Anyway, one drunken evening I was trying to find this amusing Instagram post by the UK conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg:

As soon as I found the page, however, Nathan tapped ‘follow’ and I became trapped in the Rees-Moggverse. Next day, when I saw some JRM content pop on my feed, I decided to draw some fan-art, from the perspective of ‘my new son Colby:’

I mentioned Mr. Rees-Mogg a few times, and a couple of my followers chimed in. To be honest, I didn’t expect it to work, since these accounts tend to be a bit fake, and my trolling was so obvious, but imagine my delight when next day, I woke up to this missive:

And so, for 24 hours this was broadcasted to his 70k followers:

I posted the same thing on Substack too, and got a humble, but pleasant ‘like’ from Mr. Rees-Mogg’s account. Yes, he’s on Substack, too, and so is Lizzo. To close off the subject of my Rees-Mogging, here’s a very French mini-documentary about young JRM (aged 12, incidentally):

And if you missed it, my previous French dispatch (god, how I hated that film, even thought it was filmed in Angouleme, and famous actor Bill Murray had a drink with my ex-studiomates, shortly after I left):

And now, a sequel of sorts to my older fanfiction of Emily in Paris, a show that I still haven’t watched, and probably never will.

(continued behind the paywall, along with the earlier installment, and some more thoughts on Flaubert)

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In this letter I’ll wrap up chapter 2 of Foghorn, and share some sketches, and next month, there will be new adventures of Terrible Father, and they will be pretty wild.

I’m writing this from the comics jail of Angouleme. Other than cartooning, I’ve been walking around alone lots, and it’s been lovely. During the Sunday/Monday lull, the town can feel completely frozen—there’s hardly any movement or noise, to the extent that your footsteps begin to sound intrusive.

On these walks I’ve been listening to an audiobook of Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, one of my most beloved novels. The first time I read it was during my first stay in Angouleme, back in 2017, and it took me a good while to get through it, because I couldn’t help re-reading each other sentence a few times.

I’d argue that the famed perfection of Flaubert’s style is so much more than mere technical virtuosity—it is the thing that gives his work extended life, that elevates his subjects, and his stories. There’s little nobility in these characters, otherwise.

I’ve always felt confused by the commonly lukewarm reception of this book—it’s often seen as a more boring counterpart to Mme. Bovary, but I think it’s so much more than that. Both novels have deliberate misleading titles and premises, both have subtle depths, but, to me, Sentimental Education is the perfect satire, in a sense that it transcends what we expect from the genre.

The petty characters of Flaubert’s time are as alive today as they were more than a century ago—in fact, I’d say their depictions are far more incisive and relevant to modern-day pretensions than any contemporary attempts at skewering this or that art scene (naming no names). Here’s a particularly vicious paragraph, introducing Pellerin:

He blamed the weather, his nerves, his studio, went out into the street to find inspiration there, quivered with delight at the thought that he had caught it, then abandoned the work in which he was engaged, and dreamed of another which should be finer. Thus, tormented by the desire for glory, and wasting his days in discussions, believing in a thousand fooleries—in systems, in criticisms, in the importance of a regulation or a reform in the domain of Art—he had at fifty as yet turned out nothing save mere sketches.

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And here’s Sénécal, speaking for the masses in a rather familiar tone:

Arnoux was for him the representative of a world which he considered fatal to democracy. An austere Republican, he suspected that there was something corrupt in every form of elegance, and the more so as he wanted nothing and was inflexible in his integrity.

The thing that I feel is undersung about Flaubert’s grotesque, is its subtler side. Rodolphe’s florid seductions set against the announcement of the prize for best manure is one of the highlights of Bovary, and there’s plenty of that stuff in Sentimental Education, but I’m more fond of little details like these:

“…the inventor of Oriental landscape, the famous Dittmer, wore a knitted shirt under his waistcoat, and went home in the omnibus.”

This small unexaggerated detail that doesn’t seem to do much, but adds up when you read the whole book, like one of those seemingly accidental strokes in a perfectly unpolished painting. It’s so easy to imagine this kind of sentence ‘punched up’ for greater effect, but that’s the real vitality of Flaubert’s humor—his ability to restrain himself, as well as push things into absurdity. You never know which one you’ll get, and often they intermingle, creating this hypnotic, uncanny atmosphere.

As a reminder, the English edition of my last French book is up for preorder, and the release date, it seems, has been updated to February 24, 2026.

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I also went back on instagram, suffering from a predictable case of cabin fever, and started doing daily minute-long vlogs, in gibberish French. It has been an amusing morning ritual, and we’ll see how long I’ll keep it up.

Also, there’s also a couple of new episode of , in which we discuss an absolutely banging Fall song, and a very weird Fall song, and, as always, a bunch of other nonsense.

Two Librans

14. Lie Dream of a Casino Soul

Are you feeling parched? Well, it’s time for another Two Librans episode, so open your cake holes and we’ll douse you from our content firehose…

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8 months ago · 1 like · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

Two Librans

15. Bonkers in Phoenix

Just in time for spooky szn, one of the more disturbing Fall songs from an album with a kind of holiday skull. More importantly, we finally fulfill the astrological premise of our podcast, and talk for an unreasonable amount of time about a certain Bushwick bar, centered around the stars and their signs…

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7 months ago · 1 like · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

And now, the final installment of the second chapter of Foghorn! Instead of posting a bunch of links to previous installments, I made a foghorn tag on substack so you can view all posts with serialized installments chronologically. I only included posts starting with chapter 2, since the first one was pretty heavily revised from the initial posts, and you can now read the (relatively) finalized chapter 1 in full on my website.

(continued concluded beyond the paywall)

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Today I have the return of the fan-favorite Terrible Father, and a feature presentation of various knock-offs of my day job efforts.

But first, my last book is finally coming out in English, and it’s up for preorder from Fantagraphics! The release date might be wrong, I think it’s meant to come out early next year, but pre-orders apparently do matter, especially since I asked not to send out any netgalley/promo

MORE BIG MARKETING NOW

Anyone who loved my last post can rejoice, because I’ve got more Big Marketing Guys for you. Everyone else can scroll through.

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FUNGIBLE ROMANS EVERYWHERE

If you attended/watched the recent Notion conference, you may’ve noticed a familiar character on one of the slides, complete with a unibrow and tie. What’s more, it’s not the closest he’ll ever get to climbing the corporate ladder—stay tuned for TF’s further adventures. I have one for you in this very letter, but first, let’s take a detour into that horrible real world that we live in.

As some of you may know, aside from my highly unsuccessful graphic novels and animated films, I also developed the illustrations for Notion, which have become very popular, and inspired a wild amount of imitations. I’ve been holding off from writing about this for a while, but recently I decided to google ‘Notion illustration’ and guess what, just ONE of them is mine:

The rest is either copies or Ai slop. Thankfully, I’m not particularly attached to my commercial work, and I know that everything I hate about it is exactly what made it popular, but still, it was done with my hand, and seeing so many knock-offs is pretty bizarre.

All of them make the same mistake of blindly copying the most surface flourishes and bits and bobs, without understanding any of the design or structure that went into my illustrations. It’s like seeing the worst parts of you blown up with anything redeeming completely abandoned

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but if you look outside the art bubble, you’ll find that people not only have no problem with all this, they also see no significant difference between my work and these imitations, and find any sort of displeasure on an artist’s part to be risible (see the response to the now-ancient Ghibli-GPT-gate).

Normies on reddit find it absurd that anyone would think of this as plagiarism, and yet they have no problem charging money for their shitty replicas, and many of them make way more that I’ve ever made from anything in my entire career, including this job (I’ve looked into it and I’m not exaggerating).

I guess that aspect does make me sigh, considering the sales of my books and the performance of my Substack, not to mention the podcast, which might as well be declared dead. There’s a quite horrible new episode btw that for once is not about the Fall at all:

Two Librans

13. Zoot Suit Riot

Hey everyone! The Two Libs are back with an important new episode. We’re doing the difficult but necessary work to cool the hateful political rhetoric poisoning our country right now, so we can all see each other’s inherent human good and right to free discussion…

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9 months ago · 4 likes · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

I also stretched one of my very sick beats into a preview of ep.11. Just try not to dance along to it, I dare you:

If you need more fake Romans for your unnecessary startup, here’s a full listicle (probably written by Ai) of other places where you can get this slop. And of course it’s been Ai-fied too:

And for the most hellish modern thing, here’s an Ai woman talking about Notion Ai prompts with an Ai-voice and an Ai-script:

Here’s some further reading around Ai and style and other relevant themes:

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But enough of that! Back to fun!

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YOUNG FATHERING

Here’s a Terrible Father story inspired by one of the letters he received. If you want to ask TF for advice, please do, either in the comments, or by sending me an email through my perpetually-in-progreess website (I’ll pass it along to him, and who knows, maybe your concern will become a new comic). You can read all the previous Terrible Father posts here, and there’s a couple of printed zines you can find at Gosh Comics in that there London.

To answer the last question, we need to go back in time, and meet TF in his relative youth (not that there’s any difference in anything, except for the size of son).

(continued behind the paywall, along with more Big Marketing Guys)

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BIG MARKETING GUYS

Finally, relatable office humor! Send it to Jen from Accounts, make her upset.

When I was in Armenia last month, there was a little artist talk, and during the Q&A session, someone said:

…and it stuck with me so hard that I had to draw a thousand inane cartoons to get these words out of my system.

Uploaded the fourth (aka the first good one) episode of Two Librans to YouTube if you can only listen to podcasts with visual accompaniment. It has so few views/listens that it simply has to be good, right?!

Speaking of stats, you can now turn them off in Substack settings. I caught it when it was called ‘artist mode,’ which is very funny.

They don’t completely vanish, you just don’t see them by default. Highly recommended.

I also disabled my instagram, so don’t be alarmed by my absence. Just can’t be bothered anymore. Also highly recommended to anyone who doesn’t rely on the damn thing for work.

Anyway, enough of Big Marketing Guys (for now—I made twice as many, believe it or not).

Terrible Father returns next month, so look forward to that…

…but for now, we’re continuing with a chunky 11-page installment of the second chapter of my ongoing graphic novel.

FOGHORN CONTINUES

Previous installments: ch2-1, ch2-2, ch2-3, ch2-4.

(continued beyond the paywall)

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First, here’s a direct sequel to the very first Terrible Father strip.

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INSTANT INTERMISSION

I recently decided to finally deactivate instagram—might crawl back for a week or so to promote a book, or during travels, but I want to stay off it for the time being. I did it before for long stretches by simply deleting the app, but then people would keep DM’ing me, and I’d miss all that… Allegedly, you can just disable the thing, and come back whenever, but you can also download all your content to dropbox or whatnot, which is probably a good thing to do regardless (that applies to other platforms, including this one).

If you’re new to this newsletter, these days I send just one per month, and it’s a nice medium-size package that you can comfortably consume during your morning commute and/or defecation. The posts alternate between serialized stories, but also include standalone stuff, like last month’s deranged Resident Evil 4 fan-art (I finished the remake, and it’s great, though the final boss is once again a letdown).

And while this newsletter is paywalled, the main stuff will always remain free. The paywall is there for those who want to support me, and to keep the slightly wilder stuff away from the general public. That said, if you want to get behind the wall, but don’t feel like paying at the moment for whatever reason, feel free to reach out, and I can give you a year of complimentary subscription (because I’m a good man).

I’ve been doing this newsletter for years, and at this point I really don’t care about ‘making it’ on Substack, and I’d much rather put out the sort of monthly digital zine that I myself would want to receive, instead of spamming clickbaitey essays and hot take Notes in hopes of earning that bestseller badge. There’s also a ‘friend’ referral pyramid scheme that grants you free subscriptions:

Refer a friend

ROMAN RECOMMENDS

The Retirement Party by Teddy Goldenberg

I’ve been a fan of Teddy’s ever since I read City Crime Comics, but this one is on a different plane—an instant classic in my opinion, and the best thing I read since Schrauwen’s Sunday (I’ve written about his work many times in this newsletter, and the latest book is incredible). Subtle, funny, and completely unique, with a remarkable dance sequence in the middle. Also published in French by Fidele, with a fancier design and production.

AGONY NUNCLE

Do you admire Terrible Father’s life choices as much as you should? Do you wish you had a character like that in your life, advising you on your decisions?

Well, for the time being, you can ask Terrible Father for advice, agony-aunt style, and maybe your troubles will inspire one of the future strips. Just go to my temporary site, and scroll to the bottom for the form. And hurry, before I design a proper one!

Also, you can own Father in print now, presented in a pocket-size A6 booklet. The first run is sold out, but I’m ordering a reprint, buy one here. If you’re waiting for yours, sorry for the delay!

HIGH AND LOW IN MIND

On the podcast front, I started adding videos and remastering (as much as possible) the first episodes of Two Librans, so you can now watch us talk, because that’s what kids do these days, apparently… except you can’t see us. Instead, I put together a hypnotic video collage that you can probably get nicely drunk and/or high to. Subscribe, smash the likes, etc.

This is a very niche podcast that is actually (according to several listeners) much more entertaining than its tagline would suggest, so we’d appreciate the word of your mouths. The first 3 episodes are us learning on the job, but it gets much better as we develop our abilities to talk, edit, and mix, and harass each other.

And for brand new content, check out the latest episode, in which me and Tom discuss, among other things, Patti Smith’s N-word bypass! Yes, she did drop it, and how… It’s also our first live episode, so excuse the sounds of adoring crowds.

Two Librans

11. Service

Hello and welcome back to our eleventh episode of the Two Librans. You’re in for a special treat, because this is our first in-person episode…

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a year ago · 4 likes · 1 comment · Roman Muradov and Tom Van Deusen

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A TIME TO SMELL

So. For the paypigs, I have a sequel to the previous installment…

…in which Terrible Father figures out the right smell for the right persuasion.

continued behind the paywall…

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You will hear all about my German adventures on Two Librans, when we finally edit the backlog of previously recorded episodes.

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I’ve treated myself to RE4 remake for finishing half of the current book, and it’s been great fun. I think it’s my 3rd time with RE4 in general, and it’s very rare for me to replay anything. What a banger of a game.

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A BRICK WALL-4

Today we’re going back in time, to the origins of Irma’s living situation. As usual, it’s half free, and half paywalled.

Previous installments: ch2-1, ch2-2, ch2-3.

(continued beyond the paywall)

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So I’ve been trying to reboot everyone’s favorite father figure, and went back to the original strip, revised it very slightly (removing his shirt, and adding the essential suit-and-nipples combo and an 3DHD4K title), and made a bunch of new strips (which are now (unlike half of the stuff in the original post) officially canon).

The story will be semi-improvised in chunks of varying length, but very much in that flight-forward manner that César Aira allegedly uses (never drafting or rewriting, just going at it page by page).

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Today we have a short one, and a longer one, cut in half by bad capitalism…

ANNOUNCEMENT

I’m now reverting to my normal schedule of one post per month, which will be half-free, and half-paywalled. I went on a double schedule to motivate myself out of my apathy (that very dumb approach to depression—giving yourself more than you can handle in hopes that the tasks will displace the problem), but now I have more than enough to do, and it would be good to pace myself, focusing on quality rather than quantity. Anyway, more Terrible Father, drawn in the hospital (see previous post):

AND DURING PRIDE MONTH?!11

Before we hit the paywall (because this story is only halfway through), here’s a discount just for you (yes, you), available only this June. Trust me, you don’t want to miss out on all the deranged stuff I’ll behind the ol’ wall. You will also see my failed attempts to reboot TF on paper.

Get 20% off for 1 year

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Hey gang. Last week I had a bit of a health wobble, which made me think about the time I’ve wasted reading crap online, and these are the cartoons I scribbled on what I rather dramatically assumed to be my deathbed.

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These should give you a sense of my mental state, which hasn’t improved a huge deal, to be honest… oh well. Disclaimer—I have a tremendous amount of respect for critics, as long as they call me a genius.

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And now, Foghorn continues, but only for my beloved paypigs. In the previous installment, Irma spent many pages criticizing other writers, only to end up in a big soggy puddle of self-loathing. This installment is a bit more fun as we get back to psychopathic tech CEOs and municipal erotica.

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This mid-month letter is about suffering and how it’s good for you, actually, but first, here’s a little song I wrote, complete with a karaoke video. Sing along, scum!

I’ve been slowly exploring Ableton, mostly while producing our little podcast (which itself is partially an excuse to learn a new tool). And speaking of, the title of this post is taken from this 1983 Fall banger.

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TREMENDOUS ALPHA, RIGHT NOW

So I had my very unintended 15 mins on Substack recently with this little rant about Ghiblification, complete with a small barrage of comments telling me that it’s not cringey to complain about Ai art, actually.

Anyway, of course it’s a trend, and it won’t diminish Miyazaki’s legacy. The problem as I see it is not with Ai—Chat GPT & co are just the latest tool for avoiding challenges, and that compliance with the safest, easiest and blandest solutions is what brings me down in this world.

Things have been blandifying for a while now, and huge chunks of the population lost any interest in doing anything challenging, and with it, they lost the pleasure of finding their own solutions to overcoming these challenges.

It’s not about the tool replacing something, it’s about the way that tool is used. I’m sure one can use Ai and make something great and original with it—it’s too broad a concept to condemn in its entirety, but unlike previous technological advancements, in its basic form Ai does allow for a totally different level of passivity.

Original work often happens when you figure out your own solution, instead of following the same tutorial that everyone else watched, or asking Ai to make your tedious dreams come true. When everything is pre-masticated, anything you make can only be a straightforward combination of things you already like. People started acting like Ai way before Chat GPT came along. There’s this moronic vision that we all have our great ideas, and simply need to find a suitable outlet for it. By that logic, the work that goes into learning to draw or write is nothing more than an obstacle to the art, but it’s not an obstacle—it is the art itself.

The entire plotline of the book I’m currently working on was originally meant to be just the first chapter, but it kept growing and expanding, and at this point it’s about totally different things. In fact, I don’t have a single project that went as planned, and many of them got horribly derailed, and suffered for it, but it doesn’t matter—better to make an interesting failure, than another dull success.

TREMENDOUS BETA, LATER

Style is the sum of your shortcomings. You copy as many artists as you can, and you copy them wrong, then put a lot of thought and time into analyzing their work (as well as your failed copies), and within those missteps is probably where you’ll find your style.

I had a student once who looked up a photo of ‘a glass of water’ before drawing it. I asked if he genuinely cannot draw a glass of water without reference, and I this was clearly not the reason for googling—he did it compulsively, because the quick solution had become the only one.

It seems counter-intuitive to productivity bros to try something roundabout, when you can save time and effort. But I think we need to force ourselves to pause before hitting that quick fix, and at least consider other options.

And look at the people who obsess over productivity and automation—what do they actually produce? Productivity content, for the most part. And look at people who actually did produce great works of art. Evelyn Waugh wrote Brideshead Revisited on a relatively short break from the Second World War without any masterclasses, spreadsheets and templates.

Did he have a good time doing it? Unlikely, since he was a bit of a miserable fellow, but I can say for myself that figuring out some plot point after a month of banging your head against the wall is the most satisfying feeling I have experienced, and that alone is a much greater reward for the effort than the result itself.

What kind of artist makes work just for the final thing, anyway? Giacometti to me is the exemplary artist in that sense—in his work, the final piece seems to be at best a byproduct of the real thing, which is the process. There’s a good biography of him by James Lord, the one who also wrote A Giacometti Portrait, which is a must, if you want to be even further strife-pilled.

(beyond the paywall, further thoughts on developing style, Ai mistakes, etc)

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Earlier this month, the new edition of Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto came out from Enchanted Lion. I worked on this book for a few years, and it’s so good to finally see it in print!

It’s a satirical tale by Gianni Rodari, and you can read about it (and the author) in this recent NYT article by Mac Barnett.

Allegedly, it’s a children’s book, though I had a good time reading and rereading it, and I am technically no longer a child. It has that unpredictable quality that you can find in Calvino, Aira, and co—a sense of the narrator coming up with the events as they unfold.

Here I thought I should share some of my favorite illustrations from the book. All of them are spots, and there’s a lot of them.

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I wanted to evoke the feeling of finding a dusty old book with scribbled drawings all over the margins, made by some mischievous child from the past (you can hear all about my adventures with school marginalia in the latest episode of Two Librans, btw).

Everything was done straight in Procreate on my iPad, in two layers. I didn’t really want to rely on color overlaps, the way I often did in the past, so the illustrations are mostly monochrome, with the second color used here and there for accent.

Initially, I wanted to do no sketches at all, to keep things loose, but that proved a bit too optimistic, and even with some planning, we had 20-something versions of the book dummy, because most of the illustrations had various tricky text wraparounds, so adding one or removing another could break the whole chapter.

This project was an interesting transition into my current style, a kind of preparation for Foghorn. After my very complicated last book, Tous Les Vivants (which should finally come out in English this year), I wanted to strip things down to essentials—just 2-3 brushes, with everything kept flat and straightforward.

Above are some of the style tests. I did a lot of variations on practically every other illustration in the first chapter, to get the feel for it, before moving on too far.

The sketches were very loose, though. Mostly just blocking out compositions and various directions and proportions. I wanted to have a clear rhythm in each image, a certain musicality, so planning that was important.

I took quite a few liberties with character design, and tried to keep everything very tight and loose at the same time, maintain clear shapes while allowing for plenty of room for variation. I didn’t want anyone to look exactly as you’d expect them, but also didn’t want to go too wild.

The baron was an interesting challenge—I had to draw a very old and frail man, who also (spoiler alert) grows young and strong, and eventually turns into a child. So I went for a bird-like shape, focusing almost the entirety of his design on his curvaceous nose.

The stiff fellow with the umbrella is Lamberto’s butler. I wanted to get away from the usual stereotypical butler look, and turned him into a kind of tripod.

The thing about illustrating other people’s characters, I always feel very wary of imposing my vision on the reader, but I hope the looseness and unfinishedness of my style hopefully leaves enough room for that vision to remain open to interpretation.

The book is quite dark, so I had a lot of fun drawing various acts of violence, and death in general: funferall was had by all. Btw, you can read more about my thoughts on character design here and here.

As for the story, it’s funny and wild, touching on class, extremism, and bullshit jobs (a theme very dear to my heart, and central to my own comic-in-progress, if you’ve been following that). Despite some heavy and dark themes, there’s a lightness through all of it, which I find deeply inspiring.

There’s no mention of any cats in the text, so that was a huge liberty on my part, but as a cat man, I can’t not include one in such a long book. I think there’s a dog, too.

There are a lot more, but I won’t spoil things any further! The book should be available in bookstores and online shoppes.

Check out the publisher for other Rodari books, illustrated by my old pals/colleagues JooHee Yoon, Matt Forsythe, and Dasha Tolstikova, among others.

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